The situation is sort of in Limbo right now as new information has come to light. Kid was not formally fired but she is not back on the schedule either. The company is asking Deb not to press charges (against who they didn't specify). Deb said she didn't want it to come to that. But she is also reconsidering her own employment options. Today she has an interview with Trillium, a headhunter service here in town. Deb impressed upon the area manager that she would not work under these conditions. Apparently what came out of talks with the Kid yesterday was that she was trying to get Deb fired or make her quit thinking that if she did, Kid would be made manager of the store. Area manager told her flat out she had never been considered for manager and now of course never would and her name would be forwarded to all the company outlets. Also anyone who ever called to ask about a reference would be told of this situation. One of the ways she was stealing from the company was ordering cases of various kinds of specialty cigarettes and cigars and then when they came in, never checking them into inventory. She was then either selling them or giving them away to her friends. Deb actually discovered this was going on last week when her own inventory came up short. Apparently the reason she has not been fired outright is the company is investigating all the avenues she had to steal company goods so they cane build a stronger case against her. And so far, Kid is cooperating with them. Not the brightest person in the world. She's giving them enough rope to hang her. If she were smart, at this point she'd have an attorney speaking for her. She admitted that she had stolen things to try and make Deb look bad. At some point she was planning to magically discover all these shortages and pin them on Deb. She also thought the store security camera could only be monitored from inside the store office. She never knew it was being picked up at the home office and recorded. So all of her thievery had been recorded at some point since when she was in the store alone, she never took her "work" in the back room.

As I say she is just not too bright. Anyone that has worked retail for awhile knows at least a few ways of stealing from the company. So when you become a manager, you know all the tricks already. But every once in a awhile a first time employee thinks they have figured out a grand strategy for stealing. Problem is they don'tthink about all the inventory controls down the road that most companies have developed. In this case, the company had already noticed the outflow of cash for the extra inventory and were trying to narrow it down to a particular employee.

I'd say by this time next week she will be unemployed for good. Nice way to screw up your life.